The Player

Petr Sochůrek is a 22-year old Japanology student from Prague, Czech Republic. After an excellent season, featuring a win at Grand Prix Paris and a sixth-worst Grand Prix finish worth 2 pro points, he has already amassed 45 pro points.

As 50 points is required for the coveted Platinum level and 3 points are guaranteed at Pro Tour Sydney, Sochůrek is close but still needs to score 2 extra points somewhere. He will play this event, Grand Prix Prague, Grand Prix Sydney, and Pro Tour Eldritch Moon to get them.

"I would prefer to get the points before the Pro Tour; otherwise I will be really nervous at the Pro Tour," he told me. "I have high hopes for Grand Prix Prague since I'm really good at Legacy." But Sochůrek still has several other chances to get those points, and a good finish here in Manchester would be a huge deal for him.

The key card in the deck is Thalia's Lieutenant. All creatures (except for Nissa, Vastwood Seer in the sideboard) are Humans. As Sochůrek said, "Thalia's Lieutenant is just super strong. Against Bant Company for instance, they can't kill your creatures, and then you make a Lieutenant or two and your creatures become huge."

"The deck may not be on everyone's radar, but I saw the deck on Magic Online quite a bit. I wasn't sure how good it was going to be when I started playing the deck, but it turned out to be really good. The maindeck I play today is the same as the one that beena used to 5-0 a Magic Online league recently. My sideboard is similar to his, but I have Declaration rather than Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. I need an answer to Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet, and the main deck has too many four-drops for Gideon."

Given that it's a deck with both Thalia's Lieutenant and Collected Company, I asked whether he felt the deck was closer to White Weenie or to regular Bant Company. "It's closer to Bant Company," he answered. "Your late game is really good, and you're not going to lose to turn-four Languish. Sometimes you curve out and kill someone really quickly, but that's not necessarily the goal of the deck."

Positioning, Matchups, and Sideboarding

So what are the good and bad matchups for the deck? "It's one of those 50-50 decks," Sochůrek answered. You have game against everything, so it comes down to who has the better draw or who makes the better plays. The deck is actually quite complicated: between Duskwatch Recruiter, Tireless Tracker, Ojutai's Command, and so on, you have many options every turn."

To provide the context for why this deck was his choice for the weekend, Sochůrek took me back to Pro Tour Shadows over Innistrad: "At the Pro Tour, everyone tried to find a deck that was good against Bant Company and Mono-White Humans, which meant that Bant Company wasn't a great choice. Everyone was prepared for it. But now that there are a bunch of different decks in the metagame, that's no longer true. And if it doesn't have a target on its head, then this deck is great. I'm not yet 100% convinced that the Human build is better than regular Bant Company with Bounding Krasis and Sylvan Advocate, but it's certainly pretty close, and I have been satisfied with Thalia's Lieutenant so far."

Tips and Tricks

As a final question, I asked Sochůrek for some tips and trick. He are some highlights:

You want to cast Collected Company on your main phase way more often than you would think, for several reasons. First, if you have yet to play a land, then getting Tireless Tracker before is good. Second, if you hit a Werewolf, then if your opponent doesn't play anything, it'll flip at the start of your next turn. And third, if you hit Thalia's Lieutenant, you may be able to attack with a creature that couldn't attack before.

Sometimes when you're on the play and hold Knight of the White Orchid, it can be correct not to play third land. The deck is mana hungry, so any land counts. And sometimes you need the green or blue mana fixing that Knight of the White Orchid provides in this deck.

A nice play is to chump-attack or chump-block with Thalia's Lieutenant so it goes to the graveyard, and then get it back with Ojutai's Command mid-combat. It's not a play you do often, but it comes up.